On May 1, 1950, V&T Engine #26 finished its daily run from Reno to Carson City and Minden and back, and was eased backwards into the Reno enginehouse near the banks of the Truckee River. The crew went through their normal routine of shutting her down, and headed home to rest up for the next day’s run. The V&T was in its last days, and the line was scheduled to be shut down at the end of the month. #26 only had a few more weeks service ahead of her before she was to be put out to pasture and, most likely, dismantled for scrap. The best she could hope for, probably, would be to be placed in a park or at the state museum, on display as one of the few remaining relics of the glory days of the Virginia and Truckee. No matter what, her days of active service were almost over.

Half an hour after the doors of the old wooden enginehouse were locked, a fire alarm went up on the east side of Reno. Firefighters arrived to find the enginehouse engulfed in flames, with Engine 26 still stowed away inside. Some glowing ember or spark from the engine must have made its way into some flammable material left around the shop, and ignited the blaze. Firefighters did their best, but it was too late. The enginehouse was completely destroyed, and the engine reduced to a charred pile of scrap. Sentimentalists surmised that Engine 26, knowing of her fate, decided to go out in the most spectacular way possible.

Photographer Bill Beatty had taken pictures of the engine being put away for the night, so he was still close by and able to come back and take this dramatic photo.

I wanted to single this photo out because it’s just so great.

I need to give a big thanks to Gary, who contributed a bunch of photos to the WNHPC last week. His photos were all of the V&T Engine House and Shops, and you can see them at tag:vtshops. Some of them came from the Library of Congress HABS collection that I had seen before, but there were a few that were new to me too.

It’s some great stuff, so thanks to Gary. And remember, if you have any photos you want to contribute to the collection, and you want to get a shout-out too, just e-mail me!

I just made a major add to the WNHPC today, a good section of the Lawrence & Houseworth collection. Lawrence & Houseworth was a publishing firm that formed in San Francisco in the early 1860s, specializing in scenic views of the California and Nevada mountains. This was back when travel was a huge undertaking, and people who lived in the city would never get out to see the land. So they would instead buy photographs of exotic places like Yosemite, Lake Tahoe and Virginia City, places they had heard of but would never in their lives visit.

Lawrence & Houseworth weren’t photographers themselves, they were just businessmen. So they bought negatives off of photographers with an existing library, or hired their own photographers to travel all over California and take scenic photos. This is back in the day when a camera was the size of a small dog, and it used fragile glass negatives the size of a sheet of paper. So going out into the wilderness to take some pictures was an enormous undertaking, and these photographers would set out on expeditions that could last months. They would take entire wagons with them, loaded down with food, bedding, and photographic supplies.

While searching through some old pictures, I found an entire series of Lawrence & Houseworth photos that document such a trip. The photographer was on an expedition to Lake Tahoe and Virginia City, but he did something rather remarkable. Instead of keeping all his gear packed away until he reached the destination, he stopped and took pictures all along the route. So when you look at this series, you can see the expedition starting in Placerville, making their way up the wagon roads (following present-day Hwy 50), going over Echo Summit, and stopping at Lake Tahoe for a few days. Then they made their way down into the Eagle Valley, stopping at Carson City and taking what is probably my favorite photo of Carson. I used to think this was from the 1870s, but now that I know it’s part of this series I think the date is probably 1864, the year Nevada gained statehood.

After a brief stop in Carson, it was on to Virginia City, where they took some fantastic photos of a town in the middle of a boom. They traveled from one end of town to the other, taking photos of the main street, the mining works, and panoramas from up on the hills. At the time of these pictures it had only been five years since gold was discovered on the slopes of Mt. Davidson. Everything in these pictures had been built within the last 3-4 years, creating a city out of the barren scrub. In 11 years, in 1875, just about everything would burn to the ground in the Great Fire.

After a flurry of picture-taking in Virginia City and Gold Hill, the expedition’s goal was met, and it kind of petered out. During the trip home they snapped a couple of pictures of Washoe City, but that was it. They packed up their equipment for good and headed back to San Francisco to get the photos published.

This whole series was so fantastic that I couldn’t just pick and choose a few of the pictures to put here. Plus, the general idea of the WNHPC is about volume and completeness; collecting every picture I can, and sorting them out later. So I’ve grabbed the entire sequence of photos from this expedition (well, I didn’t grab them all; just from Echo Summit on), 118 in all, and put them up on the WNHPC. You can just start here and use the Next buttons at the bottom of the page to jump through all the photos.